Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 to 1961, died in a plane crash while still in office. Widely praised and respected for the work he had done, he is the only person to have been awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. After his death, a journal that he kept was found in his house. He referred to these entries “as a sort of a white book concerning my negotiations with myself – and with God.” The journal was published under the title Markings and in the years that followed became a spiritual classic.
A remark by W.H. Auden in his foreword to Markings, haunts me lately. He said that Hammarskjöld’s journal is an account “of the attempt by a professional man of action to unite in one life the via activa and the via contemplativa.”
For me, this phrase captures one of the central issues of the spiritual life. The attempt to unite in one life the way of action and the way of contemplation. Experience shows that we often tend to overemphasize one of these ways to the detriment of the other and only rarely succeed in uniting them.
There is a real danger that one tends to regard the inner life, the life of prayer, of contemplation to be the most important part of spirituality. Which is understandable, with the focus being here on God and our relationship with Him. Important as the latter may be, it can never be so highly regarded that we neglect or even shun the live of doing and the context where it takes place. Should we indeed fall into that trap, contemplation becomes ungrounded and mere esoteric musings. And we do not come to see the holiness in the ordinary and mundane.
However, this does not mean that the focus should primarily be on the way of action. We can be so active and busy, even – and quite often especially – when we are doing the Lord’s work that we become adrift, always on the run and devoid of depth that springs from a deep inner well. The age old diagnosis of Hilary of Tours remains fresh and applicable. He saw our pastoral busyness as irreligiosa sollicitudo pro Deo, a blasphemous anxiety to do God’s work for him.
This is thus not a matter of either or, but of and. It is about the marriage of the two ways, as Hammarskjöld indeed attempted to do. It is about action coming forth from contemplation, steered and fed by it. It is about contemplation on the basis of the activities we are involved in and leading us back to them. By overemphasizing any one of the two, we are merely indicating that we do not understand either of the two.
Which brings us to the inevitable question: how? How do we unite these two ways?
How did Hammarskjöld do it? He tried. However evasive such an answer may sound, it is the closest I can get to a simple one. The reason being that this is one of those questions that you cannot respond to with a simple answer. Somehow a how-to manual will not suffice in this case. The uniting to be done here is not a once-off exercise. And it will always be an attempt. Within ever changing contexts and phases of our lives we are constantly returning to this matter, with our own lives being the arena where the uniting is to be played out. No one else can do it for us. But by constantly trying we indicate the importance of the issue at stake.
However, if I want some guidance despite the elusiveness of the subject, there are a few things that I have found helpful in my attempts.
The attention can be so focused on the content of his journal that we can loose sight of the fact that Hammarskjöld kept one. A journal seems to be a very useful “instrument” that brings the two ways together and helps to unite them.
I also tend to feel that I should focus more on contemplation and the rest will follow. I am not saying that contemplation is the most important of the two. Quite the contrary. Being a man of my age and my community, living in South Africa, I am steeped in doing. Few things in this context are regarded as important as action. So high is this regard that we are consumed and ruled by it. Without saying a word or without casting a ballot, I’ve already indicated that I think the via activa is the most important of the two. And it isn’t. It is one of two.
It is time to grant the via contemplativa its rightful place. Since we’ve been involved with The Restory and the quiet days, we’ve come to realise that silence, contemplation, being still within our day and age restores the balance in a gentle yet powerful way. It is a place where ways are united. One’s action and deeds are filled with a deeper meaning and purpose coming out of those periods of quiet.
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick there is a scene where the activity in the whale boat, the small boat sent off to hunt the whale once it has been spotted, is described. It is filled with movement, tension noise. There is the foam and the roar of the waves, the excitement of the hunt, the strain on muscle and body of the oarsmen. Amidst all of this there is one man who stands out in total contrast from the rest. He doesn’t hold an oar, he doesn’t shout. This man is the harpooner, who sits quiet, waiting. Because. “To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.”
George
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